Reading Into Denial
by Kyndraeonsis
Summary: Set after "Paradigms of Human Memory". Following her own "break-up" with him, Britta confronts Annie on why it is Jeff Winger of all people she keeps coming back to. [Warning: Overwhelming levels of sap]


She must have dozed off again.

It wasn't exactly her fault, sleep isn't always particularly forthcoming to those who had gone through a breakup the day before.

If it can be called that.

Maybe that's why she thought it hadn't hit her so badly?

Calling things off with Jeff hadn't really been that painful for her, it wasn't really an emotional thing they'd had going on anyway.

So why couldn't she sleep?

Still a little groggy, she took a couple of tries to clumsily stumble herself up from the couch, drowsily propping herself up on the back. Her bleary eyes idly scanned the room, noting that there hadn't been any change in the population. It was still just the two of them, as it had been for a couple hours now.

She focused on the soft scratching of Annie's pen against her notepad, playful swirls of purple ink spiralling through the pages. The paragraphs seemed almost wastefully tight, more like verses of poetry than academic notes...

Britta furrowed her brow as her eyes wandered across Annie's uncharacteristically sparse desk. All she could see was Annie's phone.

There was no textbook open on the desk. No books at all.

And she had that smile...

It was one Britta knew, and she knew it well. It was one she had caught her own reflection wearing just before the transfer dance last year.

It was the one Annie and Jeff always seemed to find away to sneak through the cautious eyes of the rest of the group.

It was the one that jerk totally denied he had ever worn.

"Why do you have feelings for that asshole?" She snapped, shattering the dreamlike silence Annie had allowed herself to immerse in. Shock at the sudden and vicious outburst prompted Annie to send her pen clattering across the Study Room table.

"I'm sorry?" Said Annie, more taken aback than insulted.

"Jeff. That asshole."

Annie was about to huff in protest but Britta cut her off.

"Don't deny it! You practically yelled 'Jeff I thought we had a thing' to us yesterday. You like him. Why?"

Without a seconds hesitation Annie leapt to Jeff's defence, "Britta! Where has this come from!?"

It took only a moment for her furrowing brow to soften, rising cautiously, and moving to study Britta's face as she asked;

"Did you two... break up?"

"Ha! You need to be in a relationship to break up Annie. We just sorta mutually agreed that we should stop, so if you wanna call that a breakup, I guess we did." It was cynical, acidic, and just a touch mournful, but as responses went, it was very much in character.

"Awww, Britta..."

Annie settled herself beside her friend, tenderly contacting Britta's hesitant forearm.

"What happened? When? ...Why?"

"There's nothing to tell Annie. We basically just said we wanted to stop, he said it was him and I... agreed"

Every aspect of Annie seemed to float up, tenderness drifting into her smile. As if her silent sigh was necessary to keep her afloat..

But if she was trying to disguise the feelings upon her face, she did so too late.

"See! I knew it! There it is! Your little Jeff smile!"

"I do not have a Jeff smile!" She said indignantly, but unconvincingly.

"Yes you do!" She said, nearly exhausted at having to drag this confrontation out of her. "Every time he does something nice, or you think he might be available you go 'Aww... Jeff, you have a soul. You can be really sweet' and then makes you think that maybe this time you might have a chance to be with him, and he's gonna stop being a self centred jerk all the time!"

"Britta, I think you're... reading... into..."

Annie sagged.

Realising that there was no escaping the look of pure, undiluted 'told you so' Britta was casting onto her.

"...He didn't mean that."

"Didn't he? Annie, you guys know that I'm not into the whole monogamist 'knight in shining armour' crap society forces down our throats to keep us-" She heard Annie suppress a wearied sigh as her eyes started rolling upwards so she skipped ahead.

"But you do! And if it makes you happy, then I can bring myself to support it at least a little! But people like me and Jeff? We don't get it, and you've gotta get that or get out of it. You can't keep chasing that guy, not while there are so many other guys like out there!

Like Rich! Nice people! People who could make you happy. People who can actually love you without all that hassle. If you have put half of what you put into being with Jeff into Rich, you would have won him over by now. Why can't you chase a guy like that!? He's better for you. Jeff's too busy trying to love himself to love anyone else. You've gotta accept it Annie. He can be a semi-decent friend. He can be close to a nice guy. But as much as you may like him?.

Jeff Winger, is the wrong guy for you."

" **NO!"**

She shouted it, with a force of conviction so overpowering that Britta was thrown off completely, finding herself stared back down, not by a fawning child with a high-school crush, but by Annie Edison's burning glare, one that told you that you just disturbed the deepest reserves a willpower most considered indomitable to begin with.

Annie tendered her gaze, a pleasantly melancholy smile upon her face as she spoke.

"Rich... was really sweet. He was great and nice and genuine. He was a good person, but Britta? So is Jeff.

...Maybe even more."

Britta furrowed her brow with disbelief, but Annie was not even sightly deterred, her voice soft, but forceful, permitting no doubt or deceit as she explained.

"Rich is nice, but it's easy for him. Being loved by him wouldn't matter to me in the long run because he doesn't need to try.

But Jeff? He's never had anything to love before, he doesn't know how to do it.

And he tries so hard. Just look at him!

He's fighting everything about himself every day just to sit down with us!

Everything he was for years, everything he's ever known tells him to run away from us, and it would be so easy for him to do it. But he doesn't. He never has. Even when we all ran away from him. Even at his worst, he always comes back to us. He always tries to love us."

She smiled, just slightly.

"He's trying so hard to love us, that it must be ripping him apart.

That's why those looks are so precious."

It took sheer force of will to prevent tears rolling throughout the speech, but she allowed herself one, for this one final declaration.

"...That's why I love him."

Britta's eyes were similarly raw from the experience, but no visible tear had been shed. She just shook her head, grimly.

"...I wanna believe that Annie, but I just don't buy it. He's got it in him...

But why would he say you meant nothing? Why did he deny it?

How are you so sure it's true?"

"If it wasn't, why did he stop seeing you?"

Britta froze mid thought, her arguments gushing out of her head as she considered this.

It was true, Jeff had been calling for her less and less...

Come to think of it, St Patrick's day might well have been the last one...

Annie's eyes started shyly sloping to her shoes, having to swallow a subtle wave of hesitance before she could continue.

"You know, after I asked Rich out, I couldn't go home. I'd stormed away from Jeff, and let myself think that I finally had the chance to more on from him, that it would be my night! And instead... I blew it."

A mote of glacial self hatred dripped into her tone, as she cast her head down.

"Just like crazy little Annie, always falling for the guys who could never like her. Crazy little Annie, always left out in the rain.

And I was so sure..."

Britta thought she was going to see tears flowing down Annie's face, but as Annie raised her head back up, there was a smile.

That smile.

"Then I saw Jeff. Running through the rain.

I saw him run right up to Rich's house and I couldn't understand it. Did he want to stop me? He had to know he was too late, right?

So I listened in.

I didn't get all of it, but I caught just enough of what he was saying to understand.

He wanted to know how to be a good person. He wanted Rich to teach him."

"He should have run to you"

"No. He shouldn't." The Jeff smile shining radiantly from her face.

"I'd confronted him on us earlier, and he told me 'Relationships are complicated'. I was so angry because I thought he was trying to escape from us. Escape from me. But I know what he meant now.

...He doesn't want me to want him yet. He wants me to want him for the him he wants to be."

Britta looked set to interject, but Annie cut her off.

"I know he cares Britta.

Give him time. He'll prove it to us, a little at a time.

He's just as good as Rich is.

He's just not as good at it yet."

Britta wanted to muster the last reserves of protest she had, but she was distracted by a small purple object spinning across the table, settling its glide to a standstill just within her arms reach.

Perplexed, she carefully raised it to her eyes, gazing into the soft glow of Annie's phone.

At a text.

"Hey Annie, there is a possibility I might have said something stupid yesterday, can we talk? Alone?

Britta smirked, it was nervous, quick, and just a little bit proud.

And it wasn't just directed at the phone.

"...Let me know how it goes."

She drifted out of the room, without another word.

But words were flowing, all through her head, unceasingly and uncontrollably, Annie's words kept coursing through her head, until eventually she settled on her response.

"You treat her well Jeff Winger. You treat her well, or so help me I will kick your ass until the bandit can't strike you"

Her knowing smirk became a certain smile.

One she hadn't worn for a very long time...

In the corner of her eye, in the corner of the glass, Annie swore she saw the corners of Britta's mouth fold upwards for the brief moment she remained in sight.

She twirled round with a cheery refrain, half walking, half skipping over to her phone.

A deliciously mischievous grin crept over her face as she replied:

"I'm in the study room, you have an hour to get over here.

Worried they might read into something? ;)"

She hadn't even put the phone down when it buzzed in retort.

"I have no idea what you're talking about ;)

Be there in 5 minutes."

Annie quirked an eyebrow, and in a flourish of soft keystrokes, set a stopwatch on her phone.

She retrieved her pen, and set swooshes of purple gel glistening across the notepad.

Smiling as she did so.

She delicately brushed the keystrokes as she noticed a familiar scruff of hair through the library window.

109 seconds.


End file.
